Enfield's Lamagna Center Renovates Kitchen, Allowing New Programs

Johnathon Henninger

hc-ex-cover-0828 Tom Arnone of Enfield Kids First stands in the kitchen at the Angelo Lamagna Activity Center. The project has taken five years but is nearing completion. The facility also houses Youth Services and many other programs to keep teens off the streets. Special to the Courant - Johnathon Henninger

hc-ex-cover-0828 Tom Arnone of Enfield Kids First stands in the kitchen at the Angelo Lamagna Activity Center. The project has taken five years but is nearing completion. The facility also houses Youth Services and many other programs to keep teens off the streets. Special to the Courant - Johnathon Henninger (Johnathon Henninger)

MICHAEL WALSH, micwalsh@courant.com

It's taken five years for Kids First of Enfield to renovate the old, unused kitchen inside the Angelo Lamagna Activity Center.

Now it's ready for use again during the Kids First Enfield Pirate Festival on Aug. 30 and 31. The kitchen, which was closed sometime in the late 1980s, will be used regularly to support youth programs at the activity center.

Tom Arnone, president of the nonprofit Kids First of Enfield, said finances and the challenge of meeting health and fire codes was the main reason the kitchen sat idle for years.

"This has been attempted several times before and nobody has been able to do it," said Arnone, who is also a town councilman.

When he started Kids First of Enfield five years ago, renovating the kitchen was the first thing he wanted to do. He said it will provide children in the town's Thompsonville's section new opportunities.

"This was one of the projects that we identified as being a needed facility for the town to have, especially in downtown Thompsonville," Arnone said.

The kitchen will be used to increase participation in a cooking club that is now a pilot program at the youth center. Right now, children in the club can only use dry ingredients. With a functioning kitchen, they'll finally be able to cook.

"The problem I saw … a lot of the kids … hang around the youth center until seven or eight o'clock, but they didn't have any food at all," Arnone said. "They provided some snacks, but they weren't nutritional. We wanted to help provide some meals for them as well as the cooking classes."

The renovated kitchen, which cost around $15,000 to complete, will also give Thompsonville a new emergency shelter.

Arnone said the kitchen is just one example of what Kids First of Enfield is trying to do. "We like to take on community projects, tough community projects, but long-term community projects," Arnone said.

The pirate festival, which will be held on the town green on Aug. 30 and Aug. 31, is one of the nonprofit's newest and biggest fundraising events. This year will feature the third festival, and the second with a pirate theme.

The festival, held in collaboration with the Connecticut Renaissance Faire, has raised between $3,000 and $4,000 in each of its years.

For those two days, the town green transforms into a pirate haven with three stages featuring entertainment.

"You have interacting actors that walk around the fair and they don't come out of costume," Arnone said. "They have a whole storyline unfolding throughout the day. It's a lot of fun."

The festival will run from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on both days. Admission is $10 for adults, $6 for youth between the ages of 6 and 15 and free for children under 6.

Arnone said for a future project for the group, he hopes to construct a basketball court outside the youth center and organize a youth summer basketball tournament.